Chinese government bank issues new warning on crypto currency and trading

The People’s Bank of China Shanghai Branch issued a public warning on Tuesday, reminding Chinese investors about the risks associated with cryptocurrency trading and initial coin offerings (ICOs).

“The National Internet Financial Risk Special Rehabilitation Leading Group deployed in a timely manner and adopted a series of targeted measures: first of all, strengthen the monitoring of the virtual currency trading platform with 124 servers located outside the country but provide transaction services to domestic residents, and implement effective blocking;The second is to continue to strengthen the clean-up and rectification from the payment settlement, guide the relevant payment institutions to strengthen payment channel management, customer identification and risk warning, establish a monitoring and inspection mechanism, and stop providing payment services for suspicious transactions. Currently, the relevant payment channels have been checked and closed.3,000 accounts engaged in virtual currency trading have been shut down; the third is to closely monitor the ICO and various variants, strengthen research and judgment, prevent problems before they happen, and send clearer regulatory signals to the market.In addition, it also strengthened the disposal of domestic ICO and virtual currency transaction related websites, public numbers, self-media, etc., and permanently blocked some public social media outlets suspected of releasing ICO and virtual currency trading hype information.” says a roughly translated excerpt from the bank issued announcement on September 18.

It is not surprise to see the new announcement as Chinese investors’ interest in trading cryptocurrencies continue to grow. Many investors have moved their trading activities offshore in countries such as Malta, Japan, Singapore, even some smaller central Asia countries.